Big, dramatic, watershed social changes don't happen all at once. They are the result of movements that build over time, as burdened individuals find voices together against a common enemy and lend their small talents toward big changes. Andrew Curry's brief history of the fall of the Berlin wall - and of Soviet Marxism - is a good reminder for those of us burdened about the need for major social change in our day ("Before the Fall," The Wilson Quarterly, Autumn, 1009).

Curry writes of those heady days when East and West Germans danced on the collapsing wall, "few remember years of patient effort by dissidents and activitist" or "just how much work is necessary" for a powerful social movement to succeed. Curry is up front about the role of Protestant churches in the collapse of East German communism. They were centers of prayer, communication, and organization for an effort that built slowly with a common objective, but which never in its wildest dreams imagined it would accomplish so much.

Christians today can learn a good deal from these and other similar social movements. If we want to achieve lasting change in the morals, culture, and values of our society, we have to identify a common enemy. Then we must determine to press for the overthrow of that enemy by every means, no matter how long it takes. And we must encourage everyone we can to see the enemy in all his vileness and to lend whatever help they can in bringing about his undoing.

What is the enemy Christians face today? It is The Lie which insists that God is a mere intellectual construct, Truth is only relative, life has no abiding purpose, and morals and values must be individual and personal only. The Lie is the foundation on which much of our secular and material culture is built. With high-sounding words - "pro-choice", "freedom of speech", "separation of church and state" - it has managed to achieve the institutionalization of murder (abortion), pornography, and a marginalized clergy almost wholly unable, even if they were willing, to speak God's Truth to power. If you don't hate this enemy, you aren't paying attention to the Lord (Ps. 97.10).

If you do hate this enemy, then join us in praying for revival, in confronting every half-cocked version of the Gospel you hear, whereever you hear it, in calling other believers to join you in seeking the Lord and soaking in His Law, and in renewing our mission to seek the lost with love and Truth of Jesus Christ. Gear up for the long haul and determine to stay in the fight. We're on the side of inevitability.

T. M. Moore